Ana Zulian

Q: How were you deported? A: How were we deported? By truck to Pula, from Pula to Trieste and from Trieste to camp in wagons used for cattle, transport wagons, opened, like trains today are nice and closed, ours were opened. And winter was hard and everything and rain was falling on us all the way there. And we travelled for three days because they put us on a station for half a day, and then on another station so we travelled for three days. When we arrived to the camp it was nasty, dirty, like a big puddle of mud. What can I tell you. And they unloaded us from the wagons and put us in barracks, barracks made from wood. The first barracks we came to were made of wood, later barracks were made of bricks. These brick ones, they were better for those who lived in them but I was in the wooden one, winter was cold, we didn’t have blankets, we didn’t have anything. And when we came to camp I started dying and when we came to camp they put us in a big hall and they took all our clothes off, women in one end, men in the other and they stripped us naked. ... Like when your mom takes your clothes off when you’re little, they cleaned us, showered us, under the shower and everything and gave us their clothes like the ones you see on television with the stripes like those navy ones, our jackets and pants were like that. And that was all they gave us, for the winter, that was supposed to keep us warm. And our clothes, our things we brought with us in our bags, everything we brought they took from us. And our gold and everything. All of it. Naked and that was it, all of us naked and they gave us clothes and put us in barracks, gave us the number so we know which barrack was ours so we wouldn’t get lost, as soon as we arrived, the camp was huge, you could get lost...And that was the beginning. And every morning they lined us up, how do you say, lined us...Like the army lines everyone up, they were 20 of us from that barrack...they took us and it took them an hour to call out everyone and...they read our names, and we didn’t understand anything, and they didn’t call us by our first and last names but by numbers, numbers...the numbers they, I forgot to mention that, when they lined us up in that big hall and after they cleaned us they did that. They tattooed us. They did that with ink. How do you call it...ink? Yes, ink, they pricked... pricked us. Someone died because of that because the blood, and everything they put in there... it, it poisons you and my arm was this big for eight days but I still had to work, they didn’t let me lie down, to lie down until it healed, no way. And when they...when they wrote that on us, they didn’t call us by our names but by numbers.

A: No, for theft it was very severe Q: Did you have any friends in the camp? A: we weren’t allowed to look at anyone, enemies, enemies, my darling. Even my sister, and we couldn’t even look at each other or say anything, not a word. I don’t know with whom I talked to that night but one Russian fellow, a Russian, we would climb uphill and they would go downhill. And that Russian, kind person, a small paper, with two words on it, he gave it to a girl who was going to the field. They killed him, we never saw him after that, they killed him, big dogs tore him apart. You couldn’t do anything, friends, my child, hehe, friends, yes. There were no friends there. Q: Were you with the Jews? A: The Jews were…yes, yes, not very much, the Jews were like this. For example Jews, like us, marries a Bosnian or a Muslim, so they were “mixed”, women…Christians, Christians and Jews were of another religion. Then they would come to camp with small children…when they brought them they would bring so many of them, big, long train, filled up from Hungary, most of them were from Hungary, and rich people, they took everything from there, everything, gold and everything, the Germans that’s why the war went on for so long. My dear, when they brought those children and people, their mothers were Christians…they killed the kids. Burned them. If the dad was christened they kept their father’s religion. They didn’t harm those children. And if the mother was they’d kill the mother and the children. The Jews were always burned. They burned in big chambers filled with gas, how do you call it…gas, gas. Yes, gas and the furnace. The smoke would come out of that furnace in the morning, a big cloud would form in the sky. Then they’d burn them. Poor children, they cried and screamed, what can you do, you can’t help the kids, you have to let it go. Q: How long were you in the camp? A: seventeen months. In the camp and prison and I got my pension for seventeen months. Q: and your family, were they in the camp? A: my family, in the camp? Yes, my darling, my sister was in the camp with me for awhile. And she went to the hospital. She was two years younger than me. I was born in ’26, she ’28. And she got typhoid. And she went to the hospital and we never saw each other again. Ever. She died in someone else’s home. In Prague. Czech Republic capitol. And my two brothers were in the camp. But not with me, with my husband, my late husband was also in the camp in Dachau, all my brothers were there. Four of us taken from my mother. How could she feel, all of us kids gone. Q: you were the only one who survived? A: I was the only one, all three of them…yes…forgive me for crying, yes…I’m happy to tell my story but it’s hard.